


Resignation's Overture

by Chromat1cs



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Between Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix, Canon Compliant, Dumbledore was wrong and he knew it, M/M, Non-Explicit Sex, Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, Pining, mentions of Lie Low at Lupin's, properly mustachioed Remus, sort of mutual but also sort of not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-26 13:35:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19006843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chromat1cs/pseuds/Chromat1cs
Summary: Seeing Sirius Black trapped in a prison of someone else’s design is far less than unfair, especially since he’s only just scraped his way out from one.





	Resignation's Overture

**Author's Note:**

> The phenomenal artist **[cynopoe](https://cynopoe.tumblr.com/)** recently posted [this beautiful piece of Remus and Sirius post-Azkaban.](https://cynopoe.tumblr.com/post/185183729810/post-azkaban-wolfstar-is-the-best) I was immediately swept up in the feeling of wanting to write something to go along with it, annnnnnd so about a day later here we are :>
> 
> Many thanks to [lecheesie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeCheesie/pseuds/LeCheesie) for the beta read <3
> 
> #fuckAlbus

Remus’s memory serves him well as he cranes his neck back to take in all the spelled-high reaches of Grimmauld’s spiraling upward crawl— _ I was sent to the attic for being a shit, _ Sirius had once told him at the start of year five, nearly a strange and angular brag to his vague sneer;  _ Been climbing up and down a bally ton of stairs all summer.  _ Remus had haltingly complimented the fit of his new trousers. 

“I—” Remus adjusts the hang of his satchel on his shoulder, scraping with one nervous hand at the faint peppering of his beard and a wiry-short mustache. He whets his lips and tries for words again. “Sorry, I’ve just never...seen this place before.”

Sirius indicates the darkened house behind him with a wide and half-tired flourish, revealing a cotton shirt hanging scarecrow-like from his frame and a pair of jeans that had possibly seen their better days in 1963. He’s wearing an embroidered blanket as though it’s some sort of shroud, and Remus finds that he hates the poetry inherent in that. “Welcome,” Sirius drawls, “to  _ la maison.” _

He isn’t smiling.

It was a snap decision to come here, the exact same Fuck Caution, I’ve Got Intuition sort of thinking that used to get Remus into a bind every now and then as a prefect. He has always been extraordinarily good at accidentally unearthing thoughts and feelings that could very well drive him into the ground, which is how Remus Lupin found himself on the Muggle tube halfway to London proper without even realizing where he was going until he checked the scrap of paper with the hastily-scrawled address on it for the sixth time. Glamour cast over him thick as raw wool, shouldering through city foot traffic like scores of lemmings, he was but a borough away when it hit him like a runaway luggage trolley: _12 Grimmauld Place, Islington, London._

It’s just as much of a tomb as Sirius had always said it was when they were boys. 

Remus is offered one of a whole bouquet of untouched guest rooms, dust accumulated heavily enough that one could fingerpaint a very dynamic landscape into the floorboards. He takes the bedroom with the fewest amount of portraits hung that can sneer at him, which means there is but a pair of pinch-faced cousins from somewhere around the Enlightenment hung on the wall here above a shut-tight chest of drawers—they flee their frames the moment Remus enters and sets his single trunk of belongings on the creaking luggage rack at the foot of the bed, mumbling something in hissed French that would sound very like  _ Chiot maudit  _ if Remus had any ear for the language. At least, he thinks to himself as he unlatches the trunk and sets to re-folding a few shirts and a couple pairs of trousers, they’ll leave him alone. 

A whole two days of mundanities pass in Sirius showing Remus all the necessary parts of the house—the kitchen, several baths, the sitting room, a quiet office tucked onto the same side of the building as the virulently-overgrown garden—before either of them presses at the strange mirror of tension between the both of them. They’re sitting at the almost comically-large dining table over coffee and a paper on Remus’ third morning there, oatmeal cooling rapidly in front of Remus’ untouched crossword and second cup of coffee, when Sirius finally prods at that dangerous surface.

“Why?”

It’s a short syllable that matches strangely well with the soft  _ chuk _ of the large clock on the wall behind Remus. Remus looks up at him, half-surprised to find him opening a conversation that isn’t to do with the bleak history of this house or one of perhaps thousands of his memories woven into its corners—Sirius eats like a bird here, toast untouched on a plate before him as he looks across the table to Remus, a stark contrast to the voracity of his appetite that finally put some life back into his body during his short stay at Remus’ home outside of Motherwell just after his escape. It pains Remus in a very distant part of his heart to see the bones that have crept back to Sirius’ surface.

Remus swallows down those little rattling thoughts and compacts it all into a simple shrug. “I missed being around you.”

It’s the absolute truth, and although it doesn’t shock Remus to speak it, the nakedness of it obviously startles Sirius. He creases his eyebrows with that acute pull of his forehead that Remus hasn’t seen since they were at least 19 years old and one side of his top lip comes up as though tugged by string, and Remus takes a large sip of coffee to tamp down the impulse to chuckle nervously at such a plain picture of the man Sirius once was flashing into being. “Why would you miss me?”

He almost says it, he truly does— _ How could I  _ not  _ miss you, there was more life in that sorry fucking cottage of mine with you there than there has been in my entire body since 198-fucking-1 _ —but Remus’ unflagging instinct for self-preservation does that strange thing where it compels him to shut the hell up for just a moment. He breathes once; twice. Shrugs again. “You make a good cuppa.”

There’s a little glimmer in Sirius’ eyes that could have been laughter had he allowed it to get there. Remus’ insides clench mildly with the loss of that advent, something like mourning, before the moment passes with the soft hacking-away of the clock. Remus wants to say something, anything, about the several weeks they were able to spend together before Albus decided he knew best yet again and sent Sirius to stay here. He wants to tell Sirius that even though they never once touched save for a brush of hands or a friendly pat on the shoulder there in Remus’ house, Remus wanted nothing more than to hold him for the entirety of Sirius’ stay. He wants to tell Sirius that he’s sorry for ever doubting him, sorry for letting him leave that night without saying goodbye, sorry for never being honest with either of them, sorry for not standing by his feelings with more conviction than a shrug of his fucking shoulders. He wants, he realizes as he looks down at the crossword and his eyes land on 7-across—nine-letter word for  _ Respect, worship, fondness _ —to tell Sirius that no matter the buildup of ashes and blood and scabbed hurt on all the years behind them, Remus misses him because of more than just a solid cup of tea. He has missed Sirius Black with his entire heart and more than a bit of his body besides for the simple fact that Remus adores him.  _ Adoration. _

He pencils it in like an afterthought. Sirius stands and stalks to the turntable across the hall, and when he queues up what the first few strains tell immediately is a Patti Smith record Remus almost smiles. 

Almost.

A week passes, a muddied creek lazily weathering a stone in its way, with midsummer pushing through Grimmauld’s raking Gothic window panes as though obstinate to be addressed. Remus has a growing stack of defense theory and magical tactics he’s been compiling, ever professorial despite his lack of a classroom these days, beside one of the ghastly armchairs in the sitting room, and Sirius has joked about it once-and-a-half thus far. Remus quietly considers this a victory, although he won’t admit that hearing the angles of Sirius’ accent reveal its posher curves when he toes at the books and says something snide about authors makes Remus’ heart double its pace and push his thoughts into heady places, filled with late nights in the library and lingering touches too intent to be accidental far too many years behind the both of them.

Remus steals sleep like a thief afraid it might get away without both hands on it, in a bed far too large for him that smells faintly of old clove oil and a buildup of cleansing charms beneath something faintly floral. But he sleeps nonetheless in this place, and deeply as he always has, which is why lying awake on his second Tuesday night at 12 Grimmauld just after midnight is slightly maddening.

He tosses several times from side to side, as though the impeccable plush of the bedding has anything at all to do with his restlessness. Remus eventually gives up, stares at the canopy in the dark above him, and lets his thoughts wander into the day just past.  _ It’s eerie, _ Sirius had muttered at one point earlier in the evening, three fingers of Firewhiskey sluicing around an icecube in a lowball held in restless fingers that Remus has found himself noticing more often than not lately;  _ I just feel...trapped, here. Like someone is always watching. _

_ Well, there are some choice characters on the walls, _ Remus had done his best to rebuff the darkness he could see unfurling behind Sirius’ pupils, the way it used to just before he would retreat into one of his moods as a boy before he and Remus got close

Sirius smiled wryly at that around a long sip of his drink—Remus forced himself to ignore the long column of his throat drinking it down.  _ That’s not what I meant and you know it. _

Remus had paused with his thumb at the top corner of his page, meaning to turn it and continue reading but switching instead to fold it down into a bookmark. He shut it and looked up at Sirius fully.  _ I know. I’m sorry. _ It wasn’t the first time he had apologized to Sirius since they began patching up every ragged hole in the fabric between them, but something then had made Sirius’ gaze soften.

_ It’s alright.  _ He drank again, shifting slightly in such a way that dropped one of his shoulders ever so slightly to make him seem more vulnerable in that moment than Remus had seen him perhaps since the war began. Remus’ throat had tightened and he had looked down at the cover of the book in his lap, and so he couldn’t tell what Sirius’ expression had said beyond the plain words spoken into the air as the fire crackled;  _ It’s quite enjoyable having you here though. _

Letting his thoughts run in and around themselves like this only ever snarls the threads of Remus’ mind, and so he’s up and in a dressing gown before he really knows where he wants to go. He thinks for a tick that perhaps it’s the kitchen, bound for a glass or water or perhaps his own pour of liquor to lull him to sleep, until he’s stopping on the second floor landing and wondering whether or not some ancient pull of the house itself is beckoning him here. Remus almost knocks on the door in front of him with his foolish compulsion toward politesse until he hears a small shift from inside the room and realizes that not only is the door slightly ajar, but he’s standing outside Sirius’ bedroom.

Remus swallows, his hand frozen mutely with his knuckles primed to knock, and debates with himself for nearly a full minute of attenuated silence. And then something in him shifts sharply, tectonic, until he’s pushing open the door on surprisingly silent hinges to bear him into the room. He shuts the door behind him and hopes to God and Merlin and whoever the fuck else is watching these days that Sirius won’t be angry with him for coming down here.

The bed is against the far wall, between two large windows with their curtains still tied back to let in a deep pour of white-blue light from the waning crescent outside. Remus feels the faint itching to catch it on his skin as he always does, weaker at this point in the phase but still there, and it takes his eyes a moment to adjust to the shapes of this room as he stays still by the door shut silently behind him. After a moment he can make out the form of Sirius sprawled long across his bed, covers kicked off, naked but for a pair of pants—those tattoos stand out on his skin, lurid, even with so little light. Remus had been used to the few pieces Sirius had gotten throughout their time in school, meaningful pieces, and he wonders if they’ve been covered up by the foreign angles of whatever these might be; wards, curses, old magic. Remus’ heart lurches with sympathy. He’s moving over to the bedside before he can stop himself.

Remus kneels, and even though he’s half-expecting Sirius to awaken the entire time, he jumps slightly when he’s back on his haunches and just watching Sirius when—he knows it’s unsettling, he knows it’s creepy, but he can’t fucking stop himself,  _ You try ignoring every impulse in your body to care about someone for eight fucking years, and then just _ —Sirius speaks up softly, suddenly, without opening his eyes; “Can’t sleep either?”

“Jesus. I—no, no I can’t,” Remus breathes, steadying himself with one hand on the floor to keep from falling over. Eyes still shut, Sirius shifts on the mattress over to the far edge.

“Come on then.”

Remus swallows. He stands with a slow movement, his knees popping faintly, and shrugs out of the dressing gown. He stays there for a moment, worrying the cloth between his fingers, worrying about whether or not he can trust himself to keep from sliding to pieces this close to Sirius after so many years—Sirius, who could compel him to do anything in school with nothing but a well-placed smile. Sirius, who had spent all of last year quietly taking up space in Remus’ house and asking for nothing as though he didn’t deserve safety. Sirius, who had come so alive whenever he wanted to help his godson that he would hardly even let Remus come between himself and sense when it came to Harry. Sirius, who had adored and adored and fucking entirely  _ adored _ everyone around him until adoration had reared back and bitten him in the heart in the end.

In  _ this _ end, Remus leaves the dressing gown there on the floor by his feet and decides not to let himself think any longer. He slips into bed beside Sirius and holds his breath.

Sirius moves first, his hands slow and careful but so gentle Remus almost gasps at the feeling of them. His fingers ghost over the flat of Remus’ cheek, whispering against his facial hair in the dark, and land on his lips. Remus’ heart gallops in its uneven two-beats in his chest, hooves barely touching the ground, as Sirius shifts closer. His eyes are still shut.

“I missed being around you as well,” Sirius whispers, the master of dredging up shelved leads from old conversations at just the right moment, and Remus falls head-over-heart for it all over again.

“I’m sorry you have to stay here. I w—I want you back in Motherwell, I want to keep you close.” Remus babbles it all once, powerless to stop his wheezy murmur, and it’s only Sirius opening his eyes that keeps him from careening straight into  _ I never want you to leave me again as long as you live. _

“Me too.”

Remus doesn’t know whether Sirius means that he’s also sorry he needs to stay here, he also wants to be back in Motherwell, or he also wants to keep Remus close, but right now Remus can’t care. All he can focus on is the feather-light weight of Sirius’ fingertips on his lips, the staggering silver of his stare, and the warmth rolling off of him from so near. Remus wants more.

Shifting to better free his left hand pressed under the side of his body until he stretches his shoulder, Remus tentatively brushes a lock of Sirius’ hair back from his forehead. “I missed you. So. Dearly,” he repeats, feels as though he’s been saying this to himself for years on end both silently and on a lung-searing shout to the heavens in the privacy of his own grief over the last decade-and-some. He feels too-full of emotions, brimmed up with all the things he never wanted to let himself address or truly know throughout his own healing, and it seems Sirius senses his need to quit speaking when he leans forward and presses a slow kiss to Remus’ mouth.

Remus shuts his eyes immediately, inhaling lightly, catching cedar and ash and the faint smell of old books living here in Sirius’ room and on Sirius’ face. He returns the kiss as quickly as he can, clumsily, unrehearsed and underprepared for this, the moment he never let himself imagine beyond the insistent press of his deeper and darker dreams, clawing fast at memories of him and Sirius doing the very same thing in the glimmering safety of the school terms from year four onwards—always in secret, always in half-fear of getting caught, and always with what felt like double the affection coming from Remus.

Sirius moves his other hand up to cup Remus’ face close and shifts himself nearer. He slots himself along the length of Remus’ body like a keystone, so perfectly-fit that Remus breathes out a little sound of contented surprised, opens his lips just slightly to unknowingly—oh, no, it’s knowingly, he very knowingly remembers and wants this feeling back again—invite the wet slide of Sirius’ tongue into his mouth to meet Remus’ own.

They kiss for longer than Remus can ever recall them kissing before hurrying into whatever their cobbled version of sex was on any given day, and it’s a more potent salve to nearly every hurt Remus can ever imagine having than he could have thought. Sirius kisses him as though he’s hungry for it, as though the bare nutrition of simply existing is pale gruel compared to this, feeding himself off of Remus’ breath and holding Remus’ face as though it might decode all the rougher edges of the universe itself with enough touch.

It’s Sirius who wordlessly opens the gambit for more, for touch, for the closer press of whatever it is they’re aiming to achieve with this falling together, and Remus who answers with an eager cant of his hips. Somehow they maneuver one another out of their pants without giving up what has turned into the desperate trading of their kisses, their legs bandy and twining around each other like clumsy adders. They scramble for purchase, Remus resting one hand in the curtain of Sirius’ hair while the other presses encouragingly to Sirius’ thigh. Sirius keeps his hands on either side of Remus’ jaw, nearly cradling his neck, kissing him, kissing him, kissing him as they begin the inelegant climb to re-remembering how to make their limbs sing with one another instead of just shouting into their separate darknesses.

Bliss and pain war, unbidden, in the halls of Remus’ heart.  _ You’re only taking pity on one another, _ a part of him thinks sharply at one point when he digs his thumb into Sirius’ pale leg muscle and is awarded a soft sound into his mouth in return;  _ You’ve been waiting for this for years, enjoy it, _ another part of him trills when he rolls onto his back, Sirius atop him, crouched to keep panting into his mouth and rolling his hips with the jagged rhythm of the blind chase toward a moment of freedom;  _ You’ll probably never get this again, _ Remus’ more difficult side wins out with the last word, the most practiced of all his sides over the years, before he tightens his hold on Sirius’ hair and pushes out every thought that isn’t  _ Sirius. _

Remus finds his end first, with a sudden gasping cry like a rope whizzing out from his fist only halfway up the mountain he had intended to scale. He comes hard, a sling snapping out from inside his belly, muttering something muddled about Sirius and Forever and You, You, You against Sirius’ mouth as he goes. He feels it paint both his and Sirius’ stomach but holds fast to Sirius’ body as Sirius continues to hunt completion with sharp, bucking rolls. Remus manages to pull himself back from their coil of kisses and move his mouth to Sirius’ ear, where he begins to chant a steady  _ “Come on, that’s it, come on, Sirius,” _ a remnant of the way they used to do things with Sirius always taking his pleasure and Remus willing to give, give, give until all he left to give was his words.

It works more quickly than Remus had expected. Before he’s quite ready to give up the sweetness of cradling Sirius’ body through the crests of pleasure, Sirius is quivering and spilling in silence, his only sound a breath of an exhale through his mouth hung open around brief ecstasy.

Sirius droops over him, spent, and Remus has but half a mind to spell them clean with a simple charm before he wraps one arm around Sirius’ salt-slick shoulders and falls bodily into sleep.

Remus does not dream.

He wakes in the morning to the bustle of London outside the walls, a pleasant hum that makes him smile a moment before his memory catches up with him and balloons him full of a strange mix of hope and trepidation. They aren’t wrapped up in each other’s bodies in the gentle dawn—they’ve found sleep on opposite sides of the mattress, with Remus’ arm flung out into the space between them like some kind of plea amid sleep while Sirius has balled himself up in a tight fetal curl. Remus can almost count the knots of his spine as he blinks sleep out if his eyes. After all, sex was a very different thing to a pair of exploring boys. It couldn’t possibly mean the same admission of openness and willingness to bare one’s heart now that they’ve both been so battered and torn up by time’s relentlessness.

Couldn’t it?

Remus debates allowing himself the comfort of playing with Sirius’ hair for a bit, kissing him into waking and whispering all sorts of sweet nothings into his temples, for just a few seconds before he rises, keen and quiet and gently so as not to disturb the mattress, and takes up his dressing gown. He shrugs it on as he opens the door, not letting himself look back over his shoulder and tying it to with one hand, before pulling the latch shut with a soft  _ thunk _ . He chews on his bottom lip and descends the stairs with slow, lightly-aching steps. Remus needs something in his stomach.

The coffee here, in a mild sort of humor, is French press. He prepares it with the same ritual as he has for the past week and beyond, always charming the pot to keep hot for Sirius as the later riser, and sets to his own cup standing right here across from the laughably austere kitchen sink. Remus means for the moment of true quiet to be a time for him to mull over the latticework of emotions pushed up through his skin, but his mind is white noise.

And besides, Sirius’ bedroom door opens again after only a few minutes. Remus does not let himself turn around to face the stairwell.

Sirius shuffles into the kitchen after his footsteps draw nearer and Remus keeps his gaze held fastidiously on the window above the sink, once again as big as a cathedral rose,  _ What the hell is the irony there? _ There’s supposed to be something humorous in that, Remus thinks, but all he can focus on are the sounds of Sirius pouring himself his own coffee and moving to stand very near to Remus and just behind him. The tension of saying nothing begins to grate after a moment, and so Remus does what he always does and buckles first. He clears his throat softly and licks his lips.

“Morning.”

Sirius only hums in response, but he steps closer and with a tug in his heart Remus feels Sirius adjust his chin to tuck it onto Remus’s shoulder, resting it there to track the same view through the window. Remus wonders vaguely if he sees things differently with those iron eyes of his. 

“You told me you loved me once,” Sirius murmurs. There isn’t any pain in his voice, but nonetheless Remus’ guts jolt slightly through the dulled rote of memory, dragging him back for a moment to the half-there morning just after a moon in the Shack just shy of his seventeenth birthday—Sirius’ arms shielding him from dawn, heavy warmth swallowing him like the curling comfort of home, Remus whispering an  _ I love you  _ so gently into the space above Sirius’ heart that, if not for the subtle tightening of Sirius’ fingers against Remus’ shoulders, Remus would have thought it went unheard. He nods. His throat is dry.

“You never did say it back.”

Sirius sighs, years of avoidance and insurmountable inner walls baring themselves plain in the small sound. It’s unclear whether he means for that to be the case or not. “No, I didn’t, did I?”

There’s a spell of silence between them, through which Remus sips his coffee and Sirius brings one hand up to press flat over Remus’ heart atop the worn terry of the dressing gown. Remus idly rests his own hand flat against it, palm to back, touching over those knuckles and tendons and the faint black of tattoos both familiar and unknown. Remus feels a very old ache quiver once, twice behind his ribs at the fragility there. Sirius huffs another feather-light sigh.

“I suppose,” he whispers, “what I’m asking for is time.”

“Time,” Remus hums, cocking his head to the side as though rolling the sound of the word through his head. He doesn’t turn to face Sirius but feels him nod, the jut of his chin pushing gently into Remus’ shoulder with the movement. 

“Time,” repetition like the clockwork they’re sketching, some sort of confirmation in the code of two who know one another far more deeply than they’re willing to address. Remus rubs his thumb along the edge of Sirius’ palm and sets his mug to the countertop. He nods as well. 

“We have time.”


End file.
